Former Passaic police-officer-turned-mob-enforcer sentenced for fraud

A former Passaic police-officer-turned-mob-enforcer who served more than a decade behind bars for stabbing and beating a debtor was sentenced on Wednesday to time served after admitting he made a false statement on a loan application.

Stefano Mazzola, 70, of Rockaway, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp to serve nine months in prison, but was given credit for the time he spent in custody after his arrest in 2013. He must also pay a $2,000 fine.

“We’re pleased the government saw the human side of this and was very fair throughout,” said Mazzola’s attorney, Miles R. Feinstein.

At a plea hearing in November, Mazzola told the judge that he made and used false statements and documents to fraudulently obtain a $238,000 mortgage from a bank in 2011.

Mazzola had claimed he was employed for 13 years as the owner of a Fairview business and that he had served as the marketing director of another medical business for 12 years. He also said he earned about $12,000 a month. But he was serving a prison sentence during much of that time.

Mazzola, who once boasted on a wiretap that he opened a victim's head "like a cantaloupe," was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison in 1999 for assaulting a debtor in a Passaic store as part of a plot to collect an $80,000 loan-sharking debt. A reputed Genovese crime family associate, Mazzola has served time on state armed robbery charges and a federal extortion charge from his involvement with the Genovese crew once headed by Louis "Streaky" Gatto.